When I started developing websites, back in the days when we wrote HTML proudly in uppercase, Web development frameworks1 didn’t really exist in the form we have today. I’m sure I’m not the only one who could dig out a folder of “include” files that helped me handle repetitive coding functions such as interacting with databases and forms.

Today, we can choose from a huge array of frameworks, which provide us with different approaches to creating websites. If you are like me, you probably just ended up using a framework either because your job required it or because you like trying out new technologies and found one that works for you. But if you had to choose anew today, which would you pick?

If you were starting out in Web development today, I believe you would have a hard choice — not only in which language to choose, but which, if any, framework to focus on. Some frameworks are hugely popular, such as Ruby on Rails2 and Django3, both of which power great websites and applications. Others, such as CodeIgniter4 and CakePHP5, may not get as much press but have thriving communities and conferences6 dedicated to them.

The choice should be informed by more than the language. Of course, liking the syntax and the approach is important, but other factors — such as the size of the community that supports the framework, its plugin architecture, the activeness of its development, the industries that use it, how easy it is to deploy in a live environment — play a part.

I’ll confess that one of the reasons I was put off of learning Rails when it was first released was the numerous stories I heard of how difficult it was to set up in a live environment, something that is thankfully a lot simpler nowadays.

If you were asked today to recommend a framework to a new developer, which would it be?

In addition to taking our survey below, we would love to hear the reasons for your answer. Also, please let us know of any valuable resources you used when starting out with a framework, whether a website, podcast or conference that really made things click for you. We’ll pull them together in another post to share with our readers.

If your favorite isn’t listed in the survey, please do add it in the “Other” text field. We look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Jamie

I personally develop .net and rails, I absolutely love rails and it’s simplicity but I’d say it’s better to start with something like .net to be able to propery learn the technicalities of a server side language, and gain a proper understanding of everything involved (iis is great for that too) then moving onto something like rails :)

zulkamal

Keir Whitaker

Fair point, I’ll change the label to ASP.Net MVC. I included Node principally as it’s becoming more popular and allows people to build web applications. I do see your point, wasn’t meant to be misleading.

Ashley Banks

MikeonTV

I’m actually going through this decision process this week and CodeIgniter (with Yiii, which is not on the list) is on my shortlist. The biggest issue is scalability in bulk when trying to decide what (if any) framework to start with.

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10

The Peach

Adrián Moreno

I highly recommend Play! Framework to my fellows looking for a nice, clean Java Framework. It has all the power of the Java ecosystem, with some unique features that make working with it a charm, like hot-deployment of the written code, or the ecosystem of modules. It’s a nice alternative to the “heavy” Java frameworks, as I usually say: “it’s have withouth looking like Java”.

Mario Cuba

Although I recommend Codeigniter for its simplicity and speed, I would say “none” – it’s extremely important to a beginner to know the language to some sort of level before getting into a Framework, IMHO.

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17

Ankit

Ayyash

im not a professional web developer, rather info architect with front end development skills, but i usually deliver a working environment to the developers with some server-side driven UI functionality to help them through it, I use .NET for so many reasons, I’m not fully aware of other communities but MSDN puts itself out there and its a damn good reference with anything you can think of… it also comes with free visual studio web developer which is a great environment, easy to work with and pretty quick
But why I would advice .net? Im not sure about other frameworks, but separation of presentation from content and logic and server driven information is a must in all my projects.

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19

Sunny Singh

I’m really liking what Laravel and Fuel are doing. The syntax is clean, modern, and makes sense, so I’d really recommend them to beginners. I would also suggest for them to learn the fundamentals, though.

Mike Mercincavage

Jeff Dickey

I’ve been using and leading teams using PHP for a dozen years, and have for the last several years regularly taken a good hard look at all the frameworks out there that plausibly present themselves as more than hobbyist/student projects. What I use and evangelise for PHP work is Symfony2; I’ve used nearly a dozen other frameworks in the past.

Recently, I’ve started doing some Ruby on Rails work as well, after having soured on Rails during the early days when it seemed more a cult of personality than a best-of-breed tool. I’ve been reminded what a joy Ruby programming is; the ecosystem now is much, much larger than a single ego (even one attached to an extremely talented individual); and despite a rather poor first choice of book to learn Rails from, I’m far more confident and comfortable in Ruby and Rails now than I have been at a comparable point with any new language/tool in decades. If I were starting the Web-development book I’m now working on today, I’d likely use Ruby on Rails rather than PHP. (And if you’d told me six months ago that I’d have these opinions today, I’d have asked what controlled substance you’d been using.)

I’m not going to abandon PHP or Python. But any tool that offers as productive a learning experience as Ruby and Rails together do makes a welcome addition to the toolbox.

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25

Kris Williams

I agree, Ruby on Rails (ROR) is the framework that would be easiest for a beginner to pick up. There are far more *updated* resources on the web to support learning on it, Peepcode, et al., and the Ruby language is fantastic in general, and on par if not faster performing than PHP in many respects, and a much more consistent language, i.e., don’t have to look up the order of parameters on STRPOS every time you use it.
Unfortunately for me, my current job requires PHP work on Zend Framework, and coming from ROR it’s like traveling to a spaghetti dimension. Lack of convention-based MVC and heavy use of globals and poor OOP constructs make it very difficult to work with.

Jeff Dickey

I feel for you. A good bit of your pain is no doubt caused by Zend, the 800-pound “documentation by the boxcar load, just not so up-to-date” gorilla of PHP frameworks. The things that make sane craftfolk run screaming away from ZF are a great analogue of the things that are wrong with PHP generally. Version 6 was supposed to be The Salvation Of All Things PHP; we see how that goes. It rather sucks that, now that PHP 5.3 has some truly useful features for large-scale, agile, team development, the combination of the tons of obsolescent cruft weighing it down and the ready viability of alternatives may well doom it to FoxPro-of-the-Web status in a year or two.

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